25 February 1932, Shreveport, Louisiana, USA, d. 10 December 1996, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Young was raised on the farm his father bought just outside Shreveport and learned to play the guitar and sing country songs as a boy. Greatly influenced by Hank Williams (in his early days he was something of a soundalike) and while still at school, he formed a country band and beg
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Ernest Dale Tubb, 9 February 1914, near Crisp, Ellis County, Texas, USA, d. 6 September 1984, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Ernest was the youngest of five children of Calvin Tubb, the foreman of a 300-acre cotton farm, and his wife Sarah. In 1920 the family relocated to Benjamin, and then moved again, to Kemp, in 1925. The following year, his parents divorced and initially he
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Ray Noble Price, 12 January 1926, on a farm near Perryville, Cherokee County, Texas, USA. Price grew up on a farm and by the time he left high school, was already singing and playing guitar locally. In 1942, while studying veterinary medicine at Abilenes North Texas Agricultural College, he was drafted into the Marines. He returned to his studies in 1946, but also bega
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12 August 1927, West Plains, Howell County, Missouri, USA, d. 28 October 2007, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Wagoner grew up listening to country music on the radio, particularly the weekly Grand Ole Opry broadcasts. He learned to play the guitar at the age of 10 and, owing to his fathers illness, his education was curtailed in order that he could help with the farm work.
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8 August 1921, near West Monroe, Louisiana, USA, d. 24 February 1991, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. His father died when Pierce was only three months old, his mother remarried and he was raised on a farm seven miles from Monroe. Although no one in the family performed music, his mother had a collection of country records which, together with Gene Autry films, were his first cou
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Clarence Eugene Snow, 9 May 1914, Brooklyn, near Liverpool, Nova Scotia, Canada, d. 20 December 1999, Madison, Tennessee, USA. After his parents divorced when he was eight years old, Snow spent four unhappy years with his grandmother, finally running away to rejoin his mother when she remarried. However, he was cruelly mistreated by his stepfather, which prompted him to absc
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Muriel Ellen Deason, 30 August 1919, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. The family relocated to Humphries County but returned to Nashville in 1928, where Deasons father, who played guitar and sang for local dances, worked as a brakeman for the Tennessee Central Railroad. She grew up singing in the church choir, learned to play guitar and in 1934, she dropped out of school to w
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25 May 1936, Olive Hill, Kentucky, USA. Hall was one of eight children and his father was a bricklayer and part-time minister. Hall described the family home as a frame house of pale-grey boards and a porch from which to view the dusty road and the promise of elsewhere beyond the hills - the birthplace of a dreamer. Hall, who started to learn to play a school fri
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Donald Eugene Lytle, 31 May 1938, Greenfield, Ohio, USA, d. 18 February 2003, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. His date of birth is often disputed, and varies between 1938 and 1941. The title of Paychecks 1977 country hit, Im The Only Hell (Mama Ever Raised), is apt as he was in trouble throughout his life; the wild eyes on his album sleeves give the pictur
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Lawrence Hankins Locklin, 15 February 1918, McLellan, Florida. d. 9 March 2009, Brewton, Alabama. A farm boy, Locklin worked in the cotton fields as a child and on the roads during the Depression of the 30s. He learned to play the guitar at the age of 10 and was soon performing on local radio and at dances. His professional career started in 1938 and after an interruption fo
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18 March 1938, Sledge, Mississippi, USA. Charley Pride was born on a cotton farm, which, as a result of his success, he was later able to purchase. Pride says, My dad named me Charl Frank Pride, but I was born in the country and the midwife wrote it down as Charley. Harold Dorman, who wrote and recorded Mountain of Love, also hails from Sledge and wro
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3 December 1925, on a farm near Flat River, Missouri, USA. Husky learned to play guitar as a child and during World War II served in the US Merchant Navy. His mother wanted him to be a preacher and his father a farmer, but after discharge, he found radio work as an announcer and disc jockey but gradually turned to performing while at KXLW St. Louis. In the late 40s he moved
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Robert Joseph Bare, 7 April 1935, Ironton, Ohio, USA. Bare was raised on a farm; his mother died when he was five, and his sister was adopted. As an adolescent, he dreamed of being Hank Williams: then Hank died and I didnt want to be like him no more. Nevertheless, he started songwriting and secured an early morning radio spot, and later worked on televisio
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William Orville Frizzell, 31 March 1928, Corsicana, Navarro County, Texas, USA, d. 19 July 1975, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. The eldest of eight children of an itinerant oilfield worker, Frizzell was raised mainly in El Dorado, Arkansas, but also lived in sundry places in Texas and Oklahoma. Greatly influenced by his parents old 78s of Jimmie Rodgers, he sang as a young
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